


torlinientechnik

by ascience



Category: Football RPF, Men's Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Cyborgs, FC Bayern München, Goalies Are Weird, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascience/pseuds/ascience
Summary: “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make it to the World Cup,” Manuel says confidently, and Sven wants to call out,Big fucking deal, you and everyone else in this sport.





	torlinientechnik

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raumdeuter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/gifts).



> I still owe this fic to Ireny for a bet because Frankfurt won the DFB Cup this year. It’s complicated.
> 
> Anyway this fic takes place around the time of Manuel's whole injury struggle during last season and before this year's World Cup. Torlinientechnik means goal-line technology.

Sven can’t say what he expected to find when Salihamidžić called him here.

He guesses it must have been some sort of illegal Qatari back-alley warehouse from how hush-hush it all sounded, but it certainly wasn’t this intimidatingly long hall with white neon lights and a pastel clean interior.

It looks very much like a hospital, but there are no patients or nurses bustling anywhere and it's not one of the hospitals that Sven has ever been brought to for examinations. The two or three people Sven passed on his way were wearing scrubs, but they crossed his path without words.

Sven walks down the hall, counting up to the room number that’s written in the directions on the crumpled piece of paper in his hand. The door he arrives at looks as plain as the rest of them, apart from the sign that says, “please consult nurses before entering”. The font seems serious, but the sign is so small that it looks like somebody made it that size to avoid drawing undue attention to it.

Sven looks around. There’s nobody to be seen anywhere and no bells he could ring, but he figures being a member of the team is enough of a permit to enter.

The first person that Sven’s eyes fall on is Manuel. It’s not a surprise, because that much Salihamidžić let slip - this whole effort is because of Manuel’s midfoot fracture.

Manuel is sitting in the single hospital bed in the room, surrounded by three people. All of them turn towards Sven as soon as he opens the door. Salihamidžić himself isn’t there, but Rummenigge is, as well as a woman in a white coat and another man in a suit that Sven doesn’t recognise.

“Come in,” Rummenigge says and beckons him closer.

“Hello,” Sven says and shakes everyone’s hands, excluding Manuel who holds out his flat palm to slap hands.

Manuel’s legs are stretched out under a beige blanket, and Sven notices the hospital wristband peeking out from under the sleeve of his casual Bayern branded sweater.

When Sven looks around for somebody, anybody to clue him in, the man in the suit is the one who speaks up.

“Pleased to meet you. I hope you had no trouble finding us. God knows every corner in this house looks the same,” he says and laughs loudly about his own joke. He doesn’t introduce himself, but the DFL pin on his lapel probably says enough.

“We’re glad you agreed to join this project,” Rummenigge adds, which is going a little fast for Sven.

“Project? I don’t --,” he starts but is interrupted again by Rummenigge putting a hand on his shoulder. His smile seems very forced now.

“You’ve got the go-ahead from us then, with Mr Ulreich on board. If there’s no medical objections, the surgery can happened as planned,” the DFL man says, looking at Rummenigge, then at Manuel.

“No contraindications from our side,” the woman, obviously a doctor, says curtly.

Sven tries to catch Manuel’s eyes in the hope of seeing something that might help him understand, but Manuel is only looking down with a polite smile on his face.

“Well, then. Just the paperwork waiting for us,” Rummenigge says and the other man laughs like it’s the best joke he’s heard in a year.

Sven has a rough idea of what Manuel’s injury is. He is probably going to get another plate in his foot or more screws to fix the fracture - or that is what Sven figures is going to happen.

But there’s an air of congratulations in the room, like some important deal just went through, and Sven has clearly not been let in on the secret.

“You will get the next briefing soon, as we discussed.” Rummenigge hesitates for a moment, then he claps Sven’s back and nods. “We trust you,” he says, and it seems he’s saying it more for himself than for Sven. Sven could belie him, but it’s probably not smart to do in front of the DFL official, so he bites back all of his questions for later.

Rummenigge swiftly leaves the room, and the other man and the doctor follow him, leaving Manuel and Sven alone.

Sven dumbfoundedly stands at Manuel’s bedside, unsure what he’s supposed to do now. He has no idea what’s going on, no idea what project they were talking about.

He stares at the beige blanket where it covers Manuel’s lower leg and feet. He can’t be expected to play therapist or caretaker for Manuel as he goes through surgery, that definitely isn’t in his contract and he never signed anything else.

“It’s rude to stare,” Manuel says and his leg twitches slightly. Sven realises it’s the first words he’s heard out of Manuel’s mouth today. “There’s nothing to see anyway. The surgery hasn’t happened yet.”

“So… why exactly am I here?”

Manuel frowns. There’s no trace of the polite smile on his face anymore. He looks annoyed instead.

“If it was for me, you wouldn’t be here. Or, well, _you_ wouldn’t be here. So feel free to leave.”

Sven raises his eyebrows at Manuel, waits for more, but that’s all he says after the mysterious set-up by the team board. Sven steps closer to the bed and leans down slightly.

“You’re serious? I was called out of training for this. We play Gladbach on Saturday. All I want to know is what they want me to do here.”

“If there’s something you can do, I’ll let you know.”

“What project was he talking about? Is it about your surgery? What am I supposed to do that your friends can’t do for you?”

Suddenly, Manuel gets angry. He grabs Sven’s wrist and pulls him in, so close that Sven loses his balance and has to stop his fall with a hand on Manuel’s bed.

Perhaps Sven’s indirect mention of his starting position was insensitive, but they’re both grown men and Manuel has had more than his fair share, so he can’t really say he cares.

There’s barely twenty centimetres between them now, so Sven can’t focus to try to read Manuel’s eyes as he keeps his strong grip on Sven’s wrist and breathes out shallowly.

“Sven. Leave,” Manuel says, pressing the words through almost closed teeth. For the first time he sounds just a little unsure, as pale as the sheets he’s lying in.

And-- Sven leaves. He walks back through the same corridor he came through. There’s nothing signposted on the pastel walls, but it’s like his feet lead him outside by themselves, even through the bafflement in his head.

 

 

 

Before the next team meeting at the Säbener Straße, Heynckes takes Sven aside.

“I take it that your meeting with Manuel went well,” he says. It sounds more like he’s checking up on it out of a sense of duty and not like he’s thrilled about Sven getting drawn into Manuel’s injury trouble.

“I… don’t know,” Sven replies truthfully. “I’m not sure what exactly I can do for him.”

Heynckes nods. “It’s a difficult situation.”

Sven hums in agreement and waits to be dismissed, but Heynckes just stays silent and stares into nothingness behind Sven. It gets awkward extremely quickly. Sven can’t drop the feeling that there is a vital detail that he’s not being told.

“Is there anything else I--”

“No, no. It's not your burden.” Heynckes waves his hand and starts to trot off.

Burden. Huh.

During the meeting Sven asks Thomas as casually as he can: “Do you know what’s going on with Manuel?”

Thomas looks at Sven for a second, then he turns back towards the analytics guy in front struggling with his laser pointer. “He’s getting his foot bolted back together, isn’t he?” Thomas says and shrugs.

“That’s it?”

Thomas frowns. “Should there be something else?”

Sven doesn’t even consider telling Thomas - or anyone else - about his invitation to the hospital. Nobody explicitly forbid him to do so and as a football player he usually gets shit spelled out for him, but it was still implied. Also, there’s not really anything Sven _could_ tell because all he did was walk into a hospital, see Manuel and walk out again. Phrased that way, it doesn’t seem special. There’s only his queasy feeling about it.

Instead Sven just shakes his head and their conversation dies, but his questions apparently raised suspicion in Thomas anyway.

He holds Sven back after the meeting and says, “Manu has had a plate in the other foot for forever. Since Schalke times. So, he’s going to be back just fine.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

“It’s probably best if you don’t get any ideas, for your own good. Just use your moment and show your best.”

“I wasn’t asking for myself,” Sven replies, a little offended that Thomas feels the need to remind him that a revolution against Mr World’s Best Goalkeeper would be madness. He doesn’t need to be brought back to earth. “I was just worried.”

Thomas grins suggestively, showing his teeth. “If you say so.”

Yes, Sven is stupid, he blunders, he threw his career away to work in the traditional field of bench warming. Sven knows that that is what’s being said about him, and he hates that he really has started to spend his time thinking about Manuel Neuer of all people now, outside of the fantasies that sometimes slip into his daydreams.

With too many questions left unanswered, Sven decides to do what he usually does when he wants to free his thoughts. He grabs his bag, heads to the pool and goes for a swim. The pool is empty except for David and a physio doing exercises in one corner, so it’s nice and quiet. The monotony of swimming up and down the lane indeed helps, but it only lasts until Sven goes to dry off afterwards.

When he enters the locker room, he immediately sees the large white envelope lying on top of the stack of his towels. The towels were there before, he himself put them there, but the envelope wasn’t.

Sven looks around, but doesn’t see anyone who could be responsible, so he picks it up with wet hands and turns it around. It’s glued shut and there’s nothing written on it on either side.

It’s still obvious what it’s for.

Sven towels himself off and gets dressed. He weighs the envelope in his hands again, then he stuffs it into his bag and drives home.

He opens the envelope at home, because of his inkling to be secretive about it, as secretive as the blank envelope that appeared out of nowhere. As he peels open the top, a brown folder slides into his hands, along with a number of loose sheets of paper inside.

He spreads out the paper on the table in front of him and it’s so ridiculous that he thinks, _This is the part in the movie where the mystery music starts to play._

Some of the sheets Sven recognizes immediately. There’s plenty of x-rays of what’s labelled as Manuel’s left foot, most of them with screws and plates in the bones, stark white against the black background. Sven can also somewhat read the laboratory findings, even if he couldn’t tell whether there was anything suspicious about them.

The last pages that are stuck into the file are more confusing. They still seem to be hospital files, but they look more technical than anatomical. There are circuits drawn over the outline of an ankle and a foot and photos of electronic devices pasted in between.

Sven flips through them three or four times, without understanding much - apart from the fact that Manuel is not simply going to get ‘his foot bolted back together’, as Thomas phrased it.

Perhaps Manuel’s injury was worse than everyone let on. But then again, to Sven’s untrained eye, apart from the fracture in the middle of the foot, there’s no other problem. But really, he wouldn’t be able to assess it anyway.

So this is what Rummenigge called briefing in Manuel’s hospital room. Sven huffs and pushes the sheets of paper back into the folder. This is way above his pay grade. Or well, way out of his field of expertise. And he still has no idea what his part in this whole endeavour is supposed to be.

The next day, Sven carries the envelope back into Salihamidžić’s office. He’s faced with wide eyes, when he says, “I read the whole thing.”

Salihamidžić looks at the envelope, then back at Sven. He tries to hide the uncertainty on his face, but he’s probably never seen the envelope before, Sven realises.

“Is this about Project Robot?”

“Is it about _what_?” Sven asks incredulously. “I just want to know what my role in this is.”

“Manuel is, uh, he is-- You should probably talk to-- I don’t--,” Salihamidžić stutters, then he gets up and gestures at Sven. “Follow me, please.”

Another moment of getting called around with explanation. Sven walks behind Salihamidžić who leads him to Rummenigge’s office.

When Rummenigge sees him, he nods, as if he was expecting him sooner or later.

Sven drops the envelope on the desk and sits down while Salihamidžić closes the door behind him.

“Apologies for the slightly dramatic set-up,” Rummenigge says. “There’s really no good way to bring you into the loop. I assume you looked at the files?”

“Yes.”

“Everything was a little, let’s say rushed in the end and we couldn’t show a liability in front of the DFL so we couldn’t tell you right away.” He looks at his watch, then he musters Sven. “I figure it’s time you learn the gist of it.”

Sven laughs uneasily. There’s a weird gravity pushed into this conversation that he wasn’t ready for.

“I’m going to make this as quick and painless as possible. Manuel is in hospital to get his fracture fixed, but he won’t just get a few screws in it like the last time. Screws and a plate would suffice, but he’s going to get a cybernetic implant for his ankle and foot.”

The words hit Sven like an instep kick straight to his face.

“A prosthesis?” he asks in a weak voice and falls back against the back of his chair.

Rummenigge waits for a moment, but his consideration for Sven’s feelings seems slim as he continues talking. “Well, a sort of device inside of his foot to restore and… improve function. It’s a project backed by the DFL and a number of anonymous interested parties. A fascinating, revolutionary project - but you don’t need to care about the details of it.”

Sven nods numbly, uncertain he’s understanding all of this, any of this correctly. His mouth forms his first question almost automatically.

“Will he able to play?”

Rummenigge adjusts his glasses and gives a laugh. “We’re talking about Manuel Neuer. This isn’t hospice care, this is getting the most out of him. We all want to see him in Russia next year.”

In that sentence resonates what always resonates around Manuel. We all want, we all work, we all wait, for him, for him, for him. Sven swallows it, perhaps too easily sometimes.

“What’s my place in all of this?” he asks. A sudden defensiveness overcomes Sven. “I’m not getting anything implanted in me.”

“Don’t worry. You’re not a subject in this project. You’re a valuable link between Manuel and the team, perhaps a good training partner for his recovery. We’ll see. Questions?”

Sven shrugs helplessly. Too many.

“You should discuss everything else with Manuel. You can visit him soon, after the surgery.”

When Sven is standing in front of the office after Rummenigge sent him away, he can’t take another step forward at first, he’s that perplexed. All those things that Rummenigge said were straightforward and logic sentences, but Sven’s brain is refusing to accept their content anyway.

Whatever sci-fi crap the DFL and FIFA and whoever are trying to pull, it doesn’t have to be any of his business. It doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t have to be Manuel’s nurse either, especially since Manuel himself apparently has no interest in that. Sven is pretty certain that there’s no clause in his contract like that.

But Sven is intrigued.

He starts overthinking. Overthinking goalkeeping, that is.

He can’t help but try to figure out the mechanics of his own body. Ultimately, nothing has changed. Sven is still standing on the ground on his two feet, knees bent, ready to lunge. But then there’s a conscious second of hesitation before he can move. He thinks about how the bones and muscles and ligaments in his leg would have to turn to achieve what his body has learnt to do as an automatism, and it makes him stumble in the end.

Sven doesn’t even know exactly what the implant can do. There are a lot of words in Manuel’s file that he can’t translate and is afraid to google, even though he knows his own imagination is only making things worse.

The technical drawings from the file flash across his mind again and again, as Tapalović gets increasingly frustrated with Sven’s performance in training. There’s too many variables, and the only person Sven is sabotaging is himself.

“You need a clear mind to play football,” Tapalović says.

He’s right.

Sven claps his gloves together and lunges.

 

 

 

The second time around, nothing the hospital looks familiar. Or more precisely, every hall looks the same, so they all look equally, vaguely familiar. Sven clings to the room numbers as he walks and only wonders for a fleeting moment what would happen if he just bailed.

Sven knocks when he reaches Manuel’s door and actually gets a muffled, “Come in,” in response.

The first thing that catches Sven’s eye when he enters are the two flower bouquets on the side table. Pretty, but too intentionally pretty to look personal.

Manuel, sitting in his bed in front of the colourful flowers, looks pale. His hair is dishevelled and there are rings under his eyes, but at the same time there’s an alert look on his face.

“Hello,” Sven says and looks around. There’s still no chairs, so he awkwardly stands at the end of the bed.

“Hey. You came.” Manuel doesn’t sound all that exhilarated about Sven’s visit which is probably no surprise given his reaction the first time around. Somewhere along the way, Sven forgot to think about how Manuel feels about all this.

“Yeah. It was, uh, heavily suggested I do it.” Sven clears his throat. “How are you?”

“Great.”

“Right.”

They stare at each for a moment that stretches too long. Sven gives up and carefully sits down at the farthest end of Manuel’s bed.

“For what it’s worth, I’d just up and leave again, but I don’t think the driver outside would take me back again if I come back after five minutes, so.”

“They got you a chauffeur.”

“Pretty sure that’s just to make sure I actually come here. To hold your hand or whatever.”

Manuel snorts and turns his face away. “How much do you know?” he asks in a more serious voice then, not looking at Sven.

“I know about your implant. They gave me your files. I just-- why? Why are you doing this? Thomas said you’ve had a plate in your other foot for ages and it wasn’t a problem. Why this, now?”

“A plate isn’t enough. I need to recover quickly and I need to be on the top again right away.”

Manuel says it so calmly, so matter-of-fact, Sven can’t believe his ears. The bit of sympathy he had felt earlier gives way to disbelief.

“How can you-- You _chose_ to do this. It’s cheating. Do you even know whether it will work?”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make it to the World Cup,” Manuel says confidently, and Sven wants to call out, _Big fucking deal, you and everyone else in this sport._

Instead Sven takes a deep breath and rubs a hand across his eyes. And yes, fuck it, Sven is just a guy who transferred based on a little bit of self-overestimation and a surplus of hope, and he’s nobody who can tell Manuel Neuer what do. But he’s also nobody who has to miserably wait to feel useful for Manuel.

“God. And I’m supposed to be the accomplice in this bullshit. Why not someone else who’s not, I don’t know, your direct rival?”

“Nina is… She doesn’t need to concern herself with this.”

“I was talking about a teammate.”

Manuel makes a noncommittal noise in response to that. He straightens himself from his more sprawling position, adjusting the position of his limbs.

Once again, Sven finds himself staring at Manuel’s legs under the blanket. His gawking turns bad-mannered and too obvious, but suddenly his focus is on wondering what the drawings and diagrams he saw in the file could look like in the flesh, under the folds and wrinkles of the cloth.

He keeps staring until he can see Manuel cock his head out of the corner of his eye. Manuel starts to flip over the blanket to reveal his leg, and an unnatural cold fear creeps up on Sven.

Impulsively, Sven’s arm dashes forward to stop Manuel and his hand closes around Manuel’s wrist. Sven is surprised himself by how much force he applies, and he sees it mirrored in Manuel’s face.

He is desperately curious about what the result of the surgery looks like, because he fails to imagine it, but he’s also frightened for the same reason. It’s stupid, but in a way, if Sven never sees actual proof of the prosthesis inside of Manuel, however gruesome, however shiny chrome, it continues to be a game without consequences.

“There’s no reason to be scared,” Manuel says.

He relaxes, lets go of the blanket and twists his wrist out of Sven’s grip. Then he laughs and Sven wants to hear a hint of hollowness, but he can’t. There’s no worry in Manuel’s arrogance, only _I’m the best, because nobody else is ready for what I’m doing._

“I’m not scared,” Sven says defiantly and pulls on the blanket. It slides down Manuel’s thighs, his lower legs and then his feet.

It would be wrong for Sven to use to word disappointing, but the view is underwhelming. Most of Manuel’s ankle and foot is covered in what looks like part of a cast and white bandages. Even for a just fracture, or especially for a fracture, it wouldn’t really look like enough.

“That’s it? Can you see the implant from the outside?”

“No.” Manuel frowns, obviously sour that Sven isn’t swooning at the magnificence of the invisible high-tech. “It’s all under the skin. I doubt people would be particularly happy to see me with a robot leg.”

“Because it isn’t fair.”

“Oh, come on,” Manuel says. “I have an exception permit. I’m allowed to play like this. The DFL supports this project and so does the FIFA. For them, it’s pure profit. Innovation.”

Sven can’t decide what to reply to that, because everything that’s crossing his mind sounds cliché. Manuel waves it off anyway.

“Oh, go ahead, say it. This is what’s finally going to ruin football? The final straw?” Manuel laughs as Sven clenches his jaw. “Glad to hear it. Here I was thinking I already ruined it in 2011.”

Sven could walk out. He could. But if he’s being honest with himself, he’s started not to mind so much. He’s intrigued by this project, by Manuel and his nonchalance, and he will still walk out in the starting eleven in the next match, whether he visits Manuel or not.

“When can you start walking again?” Sven asks, abrupt if going from Manuel’s expression.

“I’m supposed to already. With my physio. Something about relieving posture and helping the nerves connect with the wires, I don’t know.”

“Does it hurt?” Sven is surprised that that question hasn’t crossed his mind earlier.

Manuel lift his legs out of the bed so that he’s sitting on the edge of it with his feet on the ground. It looks toilsome, but Sven can’t tell whether it’s because of the bandages or Manuel’s long limbs.

“I get painkillers,” Manuel says. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“That’s good. I guess.”

“You _guess._ ”

“I’m already giving you a lot here, okay, don’t push it.”

Manuel doesn’t laugh, but he smiles, and the smile is genuine somehow, for the first time.

They talk a bit more after that, even if the conversation is a little wooden. Manuel tries to give Sven advice for the next match while acting as if he’s not patronizing him, and Sven cuts him off every time.

It’s far from terrible, but when Sven is taken back home by the driver, he’s relieved he doesn’t have to stay.

 

 

 

Rummenigge barely bats an eye when Sven walks into his office without hello. A week ago or so Sven wouldn’t have thought about doing that, but obviously things have changed.

“Why did you choose me to help Manuel?” he asks.

“I didn’t choose you,” Rummenigge says and shakes his head. “I would have gone with Thomas myself probably.”

“So the others on the board or whatever. Why did they choose me?”

Rummenigge frowns and draws his hand across his sweaty forehead. “Manuel asked for you.”

“No, he didn’t,” Sven objects and huffs. “He said if it was for him, I wouldn’t be there.”

“Did he? Did he say that?”

“Yeah.”

Rummenigge laughs joylessly. “Guess I’d have to be a goalkeeper to understand that change of mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re only part of the project because Manuel wanted to include you. We didn’t even really want to include an additional confidante, but he pressed us for it. And asked for you.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he likes you? Because he hates you? I wish for a day where I don’t have to concern myself with interpersonal problems when trying to run a football club. You’re part of the project now whether you and I want it or not.”

Sven makes a frustrated sound. He turns to leave, but before he’s out of the door Rummenigge adds, “Why don’t you ask Manuel? You’re supposed to meet up anyway, might as well have something to talk about.”

The next time around, Sven isn’t escorted by a driver, and the date and time isn’t set up without his input either.

Instead, Manuel casually texts him, leaving Sven to wonder whether the minds behind the project would be particularly happy about him throwing it out so informally.

Someone has moved a table and chairs into Manuel’s room, and Manuel is sitting in one of them, with crutches leaning against the armrest. When Sven enters, he looks up from his phone with a shine in his eyes. For what it’s worth, the dark circles around his eyes have almost vanished.

“Miss me already?” Sven asks, and Manuel pushes out one of the chairs with his foot for him.

“I was going to ask the same thing.”

They talk about football for quite some time, as emotionally stunted men do, until Sven can’t hold it back anymore.

“Why me?” he asks, and Manuel frowns. If Sven didn’t know better, he’d almost say Manuel pales a little bit.

“What do you mean?”

“Why am I in on this project?”

“We needed someone in the team who’s in on it.”

“No, why _me_?”

“Uh, it was a bit of a random thing, I think, I--”

Sven lifts his hand to interrupt Manuel. “I talked to Rummenigge. I know that’s not true.”

Manuel looks at Sven and hesitates before replying.

“I’m not as egocentric as you might think I am.”

Sven is stumped. He didn’t expect that answer, and has the feeling that it was not about some piece of metal inside of Manuel.

As Sven is stuck for an answer, Manuel sighs and pushes himself out of his chair. He’s not using the crutches, although Sven can tell it would be easier for Manuel to move with them.

“You okay?”

Manuel smiles at him, but it’s missing the carelessness.

“As long as my hands are fine,” he says, “my feet can take it.” He raises his hands in front of his chest as if waiting to catch a ball that’s coming at him.

Manuel takes another step and Sven grabs the crutches to hold them out for Manuel. He feels idiotic right away, when Manuel looks at the crutches and wrinkles his nose.

“It’s alright. Thanks,” he says.

Sven keeps holding onto the crutches, almost as if he’s the one needing support. The words spill out of his mouth again before he can even think about preventing it.

“Manuel. Why me?”

Manuel’s face twists into a grimace and it looks like he’s struggling with himself over what to say.

“I’m not blind,” he starts, briefly looking at Sven and then turning his gaze to the floor. “And I’m really not that self-absorbed, okay. And since I’ve already taken this one risk,” Manuel gestures loosely at his bandaged foot, “I wanted to see whether there was another risk worth taking.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“I think you… kind of do. I notice you, you know.”

Sven almost chokes on his own breath. The way Manuel’s shoulders fall after he says it confirm Sven’s assumption.

Sven is not the type to make a huge effort to hide that he’s also into guys, but mostly because there’s not a lot to hide since he’s also not the type to sleep around. And yes, ever since the transfer, in weak moments he’s maybe thought about whether Manuel would… and whether Manuel and him would…

But it had seemed as far away a possibility as cyborgs joining the Bundesliga, and although he’s Manuel’s teammate, he’s always tried to keep his feelings for Manuel to the type of crush you had on the fold-up poster above your bed in your teenage years.

And now Manuel is standing in front of him. Shallow breathing and carelessly dressed, and probably just as unconfident as Sven.

“This is why you roped me into this, this robot project?” Sven asks and tightens the grip around the crutches in his hand. He’s glad his voice doesn’t give out.

“No. Yes. No, I mean, I haven’t planned any of this.” Manuel draws a hand through his hair and stares at point somewhere behind Sven, as his voice grows more desperate. “Sven, I have a fucking computer in my leg, and I just want something normal again, for once.”

Sven drops the crutches, and they land on the floor with a loud, metallic clank.

Manuel’s eyes follow the sound, then he looks straight at Sven and comes closer to him. He looks determined, but he’s moving slow enough that Sven could back out any moment if he wanted to.

Sven really doesn’t want to back out. He waits, eager heart beating in his chest, until Manuel places his hand on the side of Sven’s face.

Manuel tilts his head, closes his eyes and presses his lips on Sven’s.

Sven hasn’t kissed a lot of people as tall as him, but it slots together as if practiced. He feels Manuel moving his mouth, his own beard against Manuel’s clean-shaven skin.

He grasp at Manuel’s loose hoodie to hold onto it, but Manuel follows the pull so they stumble backwards two steps until Manuel pins Sven against the wall and presses his mouth against his neck.

Sven feels Manuel’s chest heaving against his own. He doesn’t know anymore whether this is a good or a bad thing to do, but the smell of disinfectant that lingers everywhere in the hospital disappears when Sven closes his eyes and breathes in.

He lets go of the hoodie on one side and runs his free hand down Manuel’s back so he can feel his muscles move under his fingers.

Manuel moves away from Sven’s neck, breathes against his jaw, then his cheek, uses his body to push Sven further against the wall, and Sven uses the moment to kiss Manuel again.

Manu moans and tenses, and there is a metallic sound. Click.

It’s only a soft sound, but it echoes louder in Sven’s head. Manuel moves his foot again, in a different way and it clicks again.

Click.

“Standby mode,” Manuel pants as explanation when he notices Sven hesitating, and Sven fails to make any sense of the words.

“Yeah,” he just replies numbly and pushes Manuel backwards onto his bed.

 

 

 

The bed is almost luxurious for a hospital bed, but it’s not made to accommodate two grown men, sitting shoulder to shoulder.

Sven is still breathing heavily, and he doesn’t have to see the same shade on Manuel’s face to know his skin is still flushed.

Although they’re just lying there now while they moaned into each other’s ears just minutes before, this seems like the more intimate moment.

“Why were you so angry the first time I visited you?” Sven asks into the silence.

Manuel groans.

“I’m-- fuck, I’m not taking the easy way out here. I was frustrated. I am frustrated. I wish I could be playing right now. I hate that my body won’t let me.”

It sounds less enthusiastic than when Manuel has talked about the prosthesis before. Sven’s eyes slide down to their legs again where Manuel’s trousers have ridden up so far that Sven can see the end of the stapled cut along the ankle in Manuel’s skin.

“What can the implant actually do?” Sven asks and turns to look at Manuel’s profile.

Manuel leans back against the headboard of the bed and closes his eyes. “Restored flexibility and strength, performance data collection, nervous feedback to enhance performance,” he lists mechanically, then the corners of his mouth turn upward. “GPS. Itunes. Twitter.”

Manuel is half joking, half brushing Sven off, like Sven shouldn’t worry his pretty little head about it.

It’s an innocuous answer, but Sven has heard this undertone too often before, and he hates it.

He’s listened to Manuel moan about wanting to play, about wanting to be good in the World Cup, and he’s never interrupted him to talk about himself. Sven’s never gloated about the saves he’s made while Manuel was sitting on his ass in the hospital, and he’s never complained that nobody is grateful that he stepped up when Manuel couldn’t.

He’s taken a back seat because he knows the surgery wasn’t easy on Manuel, he truly believes that, but he’s also not naive - and he’s upset by the way Manuel talks to him.

 _You will never know what it’s like,_ everything in Manuel seems to say.

And Sven is scared of the chance that Manuel might be right. That he will never know what it’s like to have people trust his hands more than their own. That that feeling is reserved for a club of a special few and he’s missed his chance to get in.

Something takes a knock inside of him. It doesn’t break, but there’s a huge split in it, and Sven feels dirty on every part where Manuel touched him.

Sven scrambles to get up from the bed. Manuel opens his eyes with a confused frown on his face and reaches out to touch Sven, but he backs away.

“Huh?” Manuel asks eloquently, and Sven tries to suppress the anger that’s rising in him.

“Save it,” he says as he grabs his jacket.

“Sven, wait.”

With the hand on the door handle, Sven turns back one last time.

“No. I get it now. I get why you weren’t just assigned some poor DFL worker. Because nobody else but me would have been stupid enough to sleep with you.” Sven takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Thank you for my playing time.”

Sven’s footsteps echo in the hallway, and Manuel doesn’t go after him.

There’s dead silence between them for the longest time.

It’s not the only reason why Sven feels like the loneliest man on earth after Real knocks them out of the Champions League. He wishes he could be robotic about it, just take all criticism and turn it into code to do it better next time.

The league title is a done deal already at that point, but that hadn’t been enough as of late. On top of everything, there is the burning question that journalists would ask, almost with pity on their faces. If Manuel had been goal, what would the scoreline have been?

Well, if Sven hadn’t been in goal, there would have been nobody, as Manuel is still in his race against time. He shows up at Säbener Straße again more and more. Running on Alter G, then just running, increasing training until he’s allowed to train with a ball again.

Sven watches him in his individual training, and with a paper cup of water halfway to his lips, Sven realises why he feels like there’s something amiss about Manuel.

The way he walks, jumps, moves -- there’s nothing robotic about it, nothing special.

It looks human.

Manuel Neuer didn’t use to look human in goal.

It’s probably just because Sven knows about the surgery and is actively looking for clues, but he could swear something has changed.

One way or another, it’s obvious that it might not be enough for the World Cup after all. Cybernetics or not.

Nobody else says something, though. There’s just Tapalović telling him to stop focusing on Manuel, to remember the strengths he gained when Manuel wasn’t in training with him, to remember the Double is still on the line.

Sven avoids Manuel as well as he can. They pass each other almost wordlessly in the training facilities, and he doesn’t give a fuck about what Rummenigge or the DFL think about that.

It hurts, sure, and Sven still wonders how the whole cyborg plan is going to play out, but they don’t talk.

That is, until Sven heads to the pool one time and Manuel is already there with a physio, doing swimming rehab.

Sven stoically swims his lanes until his arms ache, and when he leaves the pool, he can see Manuel climbing out as well.

Manuel follows him into the locker room at an awkward distance. Sven is rubbing his towel across his face when Manuel walks in and then just stands there, drenched and lost.

Of course Sven looks at Manuel’s foot first. The staples are long gone, but the slighter darker colour of the scar remains. It looks so innocent, easily hidden under socks and boots.

Sven lowers the towel in his hand. “What?” he asks, too tired to keep running from Manuel.

“I’m not sure I did the right thing,” Manuel says, face unmoving. He doesn’t have to voice it to make it obvious that he’s talking about the surgery.

_You didn’t do the right thing._

That’s what Sven wants to say. But the painful thing is, he gets it. He’s had to think about it again and again, with Real fans roaring in the stadium, with the memory of last season’s Bundesliga trophy that he didn’t help winning under his fingertips, with a Mia san mia on somebody else’s lips, and he gets it.

Football is just another religion based on sacrifice.

They both have prayed before.

Sven drops his towel and walks towards Manuel. The floor is slippery and they’re both still wet, but Sven pulls Manuel in and closes his arms around him in a tight embrace.

Manuel’s hands tremble a little bit as they touch Sven’s sides, and it might just be the cold water, but Sven wants to read apology in it.

Sven leans his head into the crook of Manuel’s neck and softly kisses the skin there, like digging the poster you used to have above your bed out of an old attic box and smoothing down the wrinkles and folds.

No part of this is just. It’s always been weighted in favour of Manuel.

In football and cybernetics, that is.

Anything else is fair game.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Spoilers: They lose the DFB Cup, and the World Cup is going to suck.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it a bit. Catch me on [tumblr](http://lahmly.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/kissthecrest) if you want to. Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year!
> 
> (The following is blah-blah so feel free to scroll past it without reading.)
> 
> Orthopaedics. Retches. Just not my favourite field so that's one of the reasons I played fast and loose with Manuel’s recovery timeline, sorry. Also, This Is Not Your Typical Cyborg Fic, I guess.  
> And while writing I noticed again how there’s a lot that I can't express quite the way I want to in English, but there are also many things that I wouldn’t be able to express that way in German, so it’s a struggle. If some phrases come across weird or stilted in some places, it's probably due to that. All in all, it's good language practice for me, I guess.
> 
> Kisses go out to Discorgi Chat because you guys are the best. Okay, over and out.


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